The Bay Area's 10 Most Important Buildings of the Past Decade
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DECEMEBER 2, 2019 The Bay Area’s 10 most important buildings of the past decade These provocative structures have redefined our region in more ways than one By Leilani Marie Labong Ten years is a fair length of time to witness a landscape evolve, and here in the Bay Area, land of innovation and limited space, that transformation comes with no small amount of friction. Growing pains, citified. With tech really coming into its own over the last decade, we’ve seen the industry forge a new Dickensian existence for the region: The decade has been the best and worst of times. A company’s horizon-defining skyscraper ascend into the stratosphere over San Francisco, and residential high-rises sprout up to solve the need for more (luxury) housing amid maxed-out urban density. We’ve observed artists fleeing the city limits unable to afford the lavish cost of living, at the same time the arts have been strong- ritory marker for the powerful tech industry. The Tower ly advocated for with edgy new structures. Down in the blatantly broke the beloved Transamerica Pyramid’s Silicon Valley, tech campuses have become more extrav- half-century-old height record in the SF skyline by more agant in direct proportion to their steady slip from Bay than 200 feet, lest a quibble erupt over a more subtle Area reality, the heaviest constant of which is the home- and gracious size delta. And rather than quietly presiding less epidemic. Good thing there’s been a game-changing over the city during the dark of night or thickness of fog, solution for that, too, NIMBYs be damned. the building’s crowning 11,000-LED light installation by Jim Campbell has become a distracting beacon—we’re Without further ado, may we present the Bay Area’s certain that trying to make out its high-altitude visuals design of a decade. while operating a vehicle is not too far removed from texting while driving. Salesforce Tower The San Francisco Chronicle’s urban-design critic John “The tower is not beautiful but it is impossible to ignore,” King wondered why Pelli Clarke Pelli Architects “sac- claimed The New York Times of the Salesforce Tower. rificed the exuberance that make the best tall towers While its hopelessly vertical silhouette has been likened memorable,” citing the Chrysler Building in New York to a phallus, in more polite company, it’s referred to as a or John Hancock Tower in Chicago as gleaming exam- modern obelisk—a 1,070-foot-high, 61-story, $1.1B ter- ples. Aiming for such an imposing height, the Salesforce DECEMEBER 2, 2019 Tower designers had nothing but sky as their canvas, and confoundingly gave us the architectural equivalent of a different human appendage—a sore thumb. Minnesota Street Project While the matte-black facade and sawtooth roof of the Minnesota Street Project have become symbols of a vibrant contemporary arts scene in San Francisco, they also signal an innovative model of cultural preservation: Rising rents, attributed to a dearth of affordable hous- ing thanks, in part, to the Invasion of the Tech Workers, Photo courtesy of Minnesota Street Project have resulted in an exodus of artists. Philanthropists and art collectors, Andy and Deborah Rappoport, co-founded MSP, a Dogpatch complex of affordable art studios and galleries, plus workspaces for cultural non- profits—the reduced rates are subsidized by a lucrative art-storage business. SF-based Jensen Architects turned an existing ware- house, located at 1275 Minnesota (unmistakably embla- zoned in large white sans-serif on the black facade), into an impressive accomplishment of adaptive reuse. As the complex’s anchoring unit, the arts center features a sun- lit double-height central atrium; cantilevered perimeter walkways and floating glass-walled bridges that lead to a network of permanent galleries on the upper floor (there are more galleries are around the corner at 1150 25th Photo by Brock Keeling Street); a stand of bleacher seats for events; and enough original steel truss and concrete to honor the former warehouse’s industrial past. spiraling ribbons of glass and Italian white panels are made possible by a sophisticated curtain wall that guides Mira a coiling pattern of modern bay windows, a motif adopt- ed from San Francisco’s architectural heritage. Not since the de Young Museum’s gently torqued ob- servation tower has the city seen such a feat of twisting Topped off in April to great fanfare, the tower, on track architecture. While not an arts building, per se, the Mira for LEED Gold recognition, has already energized the high-rise, designed by Studio Gang, nevertheless dis- Embarcadero neighborhood, and is scheduled to open in plays Escher-like artistry, taking the corkscrew motif to 2020 with 392 condos—40 percent of which are desig- new heights—literally. Reaching 400 vertical feet, the nated below market rate. DECEMEBER 2, 2019 8 Octavia For one of San Francisco’s busiest gateways—the in- tersection of Highway 101 and Market Street—local designer Stanley Saitowitz created a loft residential building that puts the city’s sustainable innovation on display. The west-facing facade features operable louvers that give residents the power to filter variable amounts of sunlight and sound into their unit; this kind of cut- ting-edge architecture is what our tech-forward city, long suffocating under the pageantry of Victorian ginger- bread, is moving toward. Photo by Patricia Chang While the building’s texture changes by the minute (an exciting junction of technology, design, and the human experience that makes 8 Octavia a real-life example of futurism), such a dynamic exterior hardly translates to overall visual enchantment. It’s as if Saitowitz, in his effort to provide a counterpoint to SF’s pretty, but dense facades, decided to make a smart one that gives a resi- dential building the visual appeal of a school of dentistry. Apple Park The new 175-acre campus and headquarters for Apple, Inc. in Cupertino features a 2.8-million-square-foot circular building, known as The Ring. Nestled into a once-flat landscape (now a hilly, manufactured wood- land of 9,000 trees), it’s no surprise that the circuitous structure, designed in collaboration with Apple’s design studio—helmed by chief design officer, Jony Ive—and of the solar system; and its facade of 800 curved-glass London-based architectural firm Foster + Partners, has panels, each 45 feet high, which provide distant views of been drawing cosmic comparisons. After all, it looks like the Santa Cruz mountains. a landed spacecraft or a school of spacecraft education. The latter, of course, is closer to Apple’s raison d’etre—to “The building will evolve. Actually, I’m more interested conceptualize and engineer tech objects of minimalist in being able to see the landscape,” Ive told Wallpaper. design that touch daily life with sci-fi–style futurism. The Ring’s idyllic 30-acre courtyard of orchards and The inherent possibilities of this forward-looking ap- ponds and pergolas would seem to suggest otherwise, proach are underscored by The Ring’s modular office drawing people inward, deeper into its core. In fact, the spaces, which can be configured in private or open circular form speaks to Apple’s autonomy, depicting the formats; its rooftop of photovoltaic panels, which draw notion of “the whole”—a fitting metaphor for such an 80 percent of the building’s energy use from the center enigmatic, self-contained culture. DECEMEBER 2, 2019 Transbay Transit Center Since the last thing SoMa needs is another shiny, blocky tower, the new Salesforce Transit Center (née Transbay Transit Center) is anything but. Making a repeat ap- pearance on this list, the global architecture firm Pelli Clarke Pelli gave the building a lacy cladding of perforat- ed steel that’s luminous and pretty, thanks to its coat of white mica-flecked paint—we suspect you’ve never seen this level of finery from a hub of public transportation. What’s more, the gritty environment seems to have bib- lically parted to make room for this dainty, curvilinear structure—in more Eastern terms, the yin to the neigh- borhood yang. Photo by Patricia Chang A five-acre rooftop park, complete with green lawns, a wetlands marsh, and a cluster of oak trees, is a lush and verdant surprise amidst a concrete jungle. But the oasis that was giveth to us in August 2018 was then suddenly taketh away—less than two months after the Transit Cen- ter opened, it was red-tagged due to a couple of cracked girders. The building reopened almost a year later, and its bustle of activities, from midday yoga classes in the park to the regularly scheduled comings and goings of commuter life, has since become part of SoMa’s daily fabric, which was perhaps the metaphorical intent of its meshy wrap. Photo by Henrik Kam, courtesy of SFMOMA SFMOMA expansion building.” Indeed, removing Botta’s statement-making, By now, we’ve heard all the visual comparisons to black-granite staircase in the full-height atrium was an SFMOMA’s Snøhetta-designed annex, clad in off-kilter, audacious act, especially since Snøhetta replaced it with off-white fiberglass panels: A glacier. A cruise ship. The a quieter, smaller, duller maple-clad model that arguably billowing mist of San Francisco Bay. But why, pray tell, gives the already-cavernous space a little too much air. has no one submitted for consideration the new wing’s most obvious resemblance—a mummy’s muslin-wrapped face? Regardless, the expansion—stylistically incongru- Otherwise, we can liken the role of the expansion to that ous to the original, brick-wrapped Mario Botta-designed of a younger, well-meaning step-sibling: Full of verve building, a vision of postmodernism from 1995—has and eager to please, it offers triple the exhibition space been met with a mountain of judgement, most harshly (all the better to house the Fisher Collection of 1,100 from the former Los Angeles Times architecture critic postwar works); lush sculpture-garden terraces; and Christopher Hawthorne, who accused the expansion framed views of the city.